You can whitelist the sites you want through an easy to use url bar icon and drop down menu.

NotScripts uses a unique and novel method to provide this “NoScript” like functionality in Google Chrome that was not previously possible. It introduces a break through technique of intelligent HTML5 storage caching to over come the limitations in Google Chrome that prevented an extension like this from being made before. NotScripts blocks third-party content BEFORE they load and it does this while also having a whitelist. This is one of the key extensions that many people have been waiting for since Google Chrome came out.

NOTE: When you install NotScripts, you will be required to set a password for it to use to encrypt site specific settings. Please also ensure that you have Google Chrome’s cookies/local storage setting set to it’s default value for NotScripts to perform effective caching or else you will experience higher than normal reloads.

NotScripts is inspired by the “NoScript” addon for Firefox and seeks to emulate it within the limitations of the Google Chrome extensions API. It is not affiliated with “NoScript“, I just happen to like it’s functionality.

Notscripts - Chrome Extension Info
App Name	Notscripts - Chrome Extension
License	free
Type	code
App URL
More Info	link

During this evolution, some browsers tries to standout from others by introducing a new feature which had never been available in any of their counterparts. But the other browsers instead wait for the users comments on the new feature implemented, if appreciated, they implement the same feature in theirs, may be in a better way. The browser who introduced that feature first might even loose its credit in due course. User is forced to switch from their  favorite browser for a ‘single feature’ they found useful in the ‘other’ browser. Once they completely switch and get used to the new browser, the old one brings out the same feature plus few bonus features. This cycle never ends. Firefox introduced tabs and extensions when IE did not have in them, people were attracted to it and finally switched to firefox. Then the light weight chrome came with Tab tearing, web apps, new tab page with speed dial and many other features, made few users to make chrome as their default browser. Firefox then inherited few of chromes’ features, syncing and expose like tab candy/panaroma effects. We don’t have to switch browsers just for UI features, and if at all we do, it should be seamless.

This article tries to identify best features in each of the browser and the features we expect to be part any modern browser. Here, we try to baseline few ideas, those ideas which takes browser design to the next level.

Browser Main Screen (Mockup)

MOCKUP - Main Screen - Click over image to zoom

Highlights

Main Screen

1. Menu Button

Drop down to access frequently access browser actions like preferences, print options, edit etc. To replace standard browser tool bar. (Inspired from firefox/opera)

2. Extension Button

Displays drop down that contains icons of the extensions to activate/deactivate them, or displays extensions options in sub-menus. Does not consume your address bar space as used to in firefox or previous chrome version. (Inspired from Chromium resizable bar that displays extension icons)

3. Bookmarks Button

Displays organized bookmarks in dropdown, no more bookmarks bar – (Can be created in firefox by customize options for toolbar)

4. Only Favicons in tab title

We just need favicons to know which tab is what. Most of the websites have favicon now-a-days (Inspired from faviconize tab firefox extension/pin tabs/app tabs)

5. Tabs that behaves like Dock/Taskbar icons in OSX/Win7

MOCKUP - Switch pages from same site with hover preview

One favicon displayed for one domain/website. Its like transformation from Win XP quicklauch to Win7 Taskbar. 2 pages from Facebook are to be indicated by one tab and should allow user to switch over the pages from that single Facebook icon displayed. For example, hovering over the icon should display preview of different pages open from that same site. So this keeps the number of tabs open in the browser under control. (Inspired from OSX dock/Win7 Peek).

6. Tab Sets/Groups

Tabs should be grouped to different sets and only those tabs belonging to that set should be visible on the browser window. This gives us distraction free environment. We should be able to move the tabs across the tabset by drag-n-drop (Inspired by Opera Tab Sets/Firefox Panorama)

Example -

• SOCIAL Set – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc
• WORK Set – Stackoverflow, Superuser, Dev Forums etc
• FUN Set – Youtube, Failblog etc

7. DropZone for Downloads

We don’t need a separate downloads window to keep track of our downloads.  All we need is a small icon which displays the status of our downloads and should reveal the items downloaded only when required. So idea is to click on that dropzone icon to pop up a stack which displays the downloaded items/in progress ones. Another feature we would want is to be able to drag and drop the target URLs directly to the dropzone to start the download to the default downloads folder. (Inspired from Download statusbar firefox extensions/ flashget)

Check the Mockup

8. Semi Transparent Status Bar to display full URL (Autohides)

Status bar displays only when we hover over any link (Inspired from Chrome)

9. Unload the tabs on demand/Not all tabs are loaded during browser start

Some of the websites sends Ajax request continually load the time based dynamic content every n seconds even if the page is not active. For examples gmail syncs with the server to check for new email and there might be different apps that does the same. But we might not want gmail to do so and we dont want to close the tab either. So the solution is to unload the tab and activate/load it only when required. This happens during browser start as well, we load only the last tab this significantly increase browser startup time. (Inspired from Bartab Firefox addon)

10. Mouse Gesture Support

Less keystrokes – More usable browsers will be. Built-in support for mouse gestures. (Inspired by FireGestures Firefox addon and Chrome Gestures addon in Chrome)

11. Sync ‘Everything’

Every time you do a fresh install of your favorite browser anywhere, you have to spend hours to customize it. Do it at home and you repeat all again at work, or on your new laptop. All browsers should have built-in capabilities to sync preferences, extensions, bookmarks, and everything to ensure that user doesn’t even notice any change if browses at home or at work. He should be given options to create profile and sync those at work or home. (Inspired from Firefox weave, built-in with Firefox 4 though)

New Tab/ Hidden Address Bar

MOCKUP - New Tab Popup

1. Pops-up on demand

Address bar consumes unnecessary space of our precious screen real estate. We need address bar only when we access a new page so why should it be visible all the time? Clicking on the newtab icon displays a popup that has a tiny address bar. This is like a omnibar/awesomebar which means single box to accept URL as well as search string. (Inspired from AppPanel enabled using startup switch in Chrome).

2. Search Site

Below the address bar are the favicons of the currently open tabs. Example, select the icon of twitter then enter the search term to search twitter for something. Reduces many steps this way.

3. Top Sites (Starred)

Few starred sites/frequently used sites (may be top 10) are displayed in drop down when the Star icon is clicked. So open these sites with a click (Most visited in Chrome, Top Sites in Safari)

Tab Grid

A new perspective to our usual browsing experience. This displays preview of currently opened tabs in a grid, tabs can be easily identified/switched to from here. We should be able to close the tabs with a click without switching back to the page.

MOCKUP - Tab Grid

1. New Tab from Grid

This is the best part, we can create tabs by just entering the address of the page you want to access from the grid itself. Example – create tabs for Google reader/ Gmail or any site instantaneously and let it load when you are still in the grid. So in future grid enables user to quickly create and open multiple tabs. (Inspired from IE in Win7 mobile)

2. Switch Tabsets from Grid

Click on the tabset button to preview the tabs belonging to that set. Easily drag and drop the tabs to different sets from the Grid as well. (Inspired from Firefox Panorama/OSX Expose)

• Counter on Panorama feature – This feature in Firefox will become little complex and unmanageable after opening maybe 30 tabs (or on laptop screens). We will end up in have 10 or 15 tab piles. But the method mentioned in this article lets users to manage tabs on that tab set and does not display all the tabs in all the sets.

3. Open New Page of Opened Tab

List of opened tabs displayed in the Grid, click on it to clone the site to a different page.

Conclusion

Like the term ‘Tabs’ which is now a standard in all the browser, we expect the ideas mentioned in the post to be integral part of every browser. Let the users have seamless browser switch if the opt for. So in future, users should consider the parameters like speed, stability, performance to let them decide on the chosen and not just the UI based influences.

Mockups Below For Reference

Main Screen - Click over image to zoom

Hover Preview

New Tab Popup

Tab Grid

Please mention in comments if there are any features you would want to see in all the browsers or you deny on any of the idea mentioned.

Author of this post is familiar with different web browsers like IE 4 – 8, Now Defunct Netscape Navigator, Firefox (all versions), Opera, Chrome (all versions), Safari and many others. Has been evangelizing web browsers since 90s.

This is a free portable tool and can run on almost any Windows operating systems (Pro commercial version with enhanced is also available)

Here I’ve documented few of the main features of the free version of this tool; download and experiment with 3D traceroute to get the complete picture of it.

Note: This article is targeted for the readers who have basic understanding or experience with using various networking tools.

Main Window:

To trace the route to the sever, we just have to enter the target’s URL and click on the Trace Button. The 3D Trace View is continuosly refreshed and is displayed on the main window. We have options to zoom, rotate and move around the display as per our requirement.

3D TraceRoute Main Window

Whois Details Window :

We can view the query options in the ‘Query’ navigation present in the left handside bar. Just click on the query to obtain the whois details of the server.

Whois Details Window

HTTP Spy :

One cool feature in this app is HTTP Spy which allows us to quickly obtain the details like name and version of the Server in which this target application is hosted. This is obtained by analysing the Response headers of the Request message sent by the server.

HTTP Spy Window

Email Header Analysis :

To trace down the source or details of the email message we have received we should see the raw email message and manually go through it. For example in Gmail we have an Option ‘show original’ to view the raw message. 3D TraceRoute has a email header analyzer which process the raw data and displays the IP address of the sender and whether it has been listed as Spam before.

Email Headers Analysis

Video Demo :

Features

• 3d traceroute display: multiple graphics modification options
• Statistics window: min, max, average, standard deviation and history window with destination ping time
• AS list: the usual data view with lots of features
• Long period Ping and HTTP monitor
• Whois query: everything with only one click
• Record and playback: record any trace and playback step by step
• Built-in Browser: and the browser is already built in.
• ASN inspector
• NSLookup: with UDP and TCP. And zone transfer capability.
• Day and Night trace: Admins beloved toy
• Command-line execution mode: full replacement for good old buddy tracert.
• Passive OS fingerprinting
• Portscanner (knows 3,612 well known ports)
• eMail headers Analyzer: against RBLs
• Connection viewer: TCP, IP, UDP etc. statistics
• HTTP Spy: query HTTP-headers and webpages
• Atomic Clock Sync
• Built-in TELNET client
• And lot more….

Download 3D TraceRoute :

NOTE: This post is intended only for the security testers/analysts and not for a normal internet user. Please do not mess up the default security settings in IE8, unless you know what you are doing.

XSS Filtering

XSS Filter Enabled

While testing for XSS, we can notice that the XSS alert is not popped up and an ‘Information Bar’ is displayed on the top. Here the IE8 engine modifies the XSS script (strips of malicious characters) and then echoed back.

Disabling XSS Filters

To disable XSS Filtering, Go to Internet Options from the Tools Menu, then select ‘Security’ tab, make sure that ‘Internet’ is selected and click ‘Custom Level’. Scroll down to the bottom and select ‘Disable’ in the Enable XSS Filter option.

Disable XSS Filter Options

NOTE: Enable XSS Filtering after the requirement or Reset to default settings.

Update: To Disable the XSS filter via application code; set HTTP Response header: X-XSS-Protection: 0

To know about XSS filter check this link

This attracts more people to try and test dropbox. Nice move…

Download Dropbox Portable : (Size : ~15MB)

More Info at Dropbox Home

In this post I’m listing down 3 types of broken link checkers and its features, a portable one, as a wordpress plugin and an online app. Read this article, choose your link checker and do mention in the comments.

1. Portable Tool – Xenu’s Link Sleuth

Xenu’s Link Sleuth is a free tool which can be used to verify the status of the links in your site. This tool is a must have for any web master/blogger who uses a good amount of external/internal links in their sites.

This tool generates a neat report in html format and gives all the information regarding the link status. It also gives us a quick summary at the end of the report

Report Summary

Features

• Simple user-interface
• Can re-check broken links (useful for temporary network errors)
• Simple report format
• Executable file smaller than 1MB
• Supports SSL websites (“https:// “)
• Partial testing of ftp and gopher sites
• Detects and reports redirected URLs
• Site Map

Check the Wiki article on Link Sleuth here

Download Link Sleuth : (More Info @ Xenu Link Sleuth Homepage)

2. WordPress Plugin – Broken Link Checker

This plugin will monitor your blog looking for broken links and let you know if any are found.

Broken Link Checker WP Plugin

Features

• Monitors links in your posts, pages, the blogroll, and custom fields (optional).
• Detects links that don’t work and missing images.
• Notifies you on the Dashboard if any are found.
• Also detects redirected links.
• Makes broken links display differently in posts (optional).
• Link checking intervals can be configured.
• New/modified posts are checked ASAP.
• You view broken links, redirects, and a complete list of links used on your site, in the Tools -> Broken Links tab.
• Each link can be edited or unlinked directly via the plugin’s page, without manually editing each post.

Install Broken Links Checker :

3. Online Version – iWebTools Broken Link Checker

This is the simplest and online version of the previously mentioned broken link checker. Just submit the URL you want to check for and the broken links are represented by the ‘cross’ mark. The links are checked in the background and displayed through Ajax so we dont have to wait and refresh the page for each check. Go to iWebTools

Broken Link Checker Online

Check iWebTools Broken Link Checker

Quick look at dapper

Video 1 :

Video 2 :

You can set variable inputs to customize your feeds as shown below.

Alerts can also be set so that a specified action (like notification by email) is performed when the value in the variable input matches the value specified by us.

Dapperfox – Firefox Extension

DapperFox is a Firefox extension that sits next to the RSS icon in your browser.
Whenever you visit a website DapperFox will show you RSS feeds that other people have created, as well as allow you to create a new feed to share with the community. This is perfect when a site does not have its own RSS feed, or when the default feed settings are not convincing enough.

Dropbox download is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Setting up Dropbox is very easy. We need to install dropbox, then

1. Create a Dropbox account.
2. Specify the Dropbox location in your PC (All the files and folders are sync’d with your online dropbox)

The mirror image of your files/folders can be accessed in all the PCs with dropbox and your online dropbox account. The folder structure of your local dropbox folder is maintained across the PC’s and the your online dropbox.

We can easily open our online dropbox account from the trayicon. We can also get the Status, Recently changed files etc from the tray icon.

Dropbox automatically maintains revisions of the files which are syncd. So that we can restore the previous versions as in when required.

Dropbox is not only used as an ultimate sync’ing solution but also to store and share any files to public users. You can put the public files inside the predefined public folder inside your dropbox. To share it with friends, provide the public URL as shown below. (We dont need to go to our dropbox site to copy the public URL, we can get the it from our local public folder itself by right click and select ‘Copy public link’).

We can also share our files with other dropbox users with the help of ‘Share folders’.

Check the Video demo here,

A script is added to our outlook client which automatically pops up the alert as shown below.

The following script can be embedded in Outlook so that we get an alert whenever we miss the subject or the attachments

Code

Private Sub Application_ItemSend(ByVal Item As Object, cancel As Boolean)
 
Dim strSubject As String
strSubject = Item.Subject
If Len(Trim(strSubject)) = 0 Then
    Prompt$ = "Subject is Empty. Are you sure you want to send the Mail?"
    If MsgBox(Prompt$, vbYesNo + vbQuestion + vbMsgBoxSetForeground, "Subject is Empty") = vbNo Then
            cancel = True
    End If
End If
 
Dim lngres As Long
If (InStr(1, UCase(Item.Body), "ATTACH") <> 0 Or InStr(1, UCase(Item.Body), "PFA") <> 0) Then
    If Item.Attachments.Count = 0 Then
        lngres = MsgBox("Attachment reference detected, but no files attached. Send anyway?", _
        vbYesNo + vbDefaultButton2 + vbQuestion, "No files Attached")
 
        If lngres = vbNo Then cancel = True
    End If
End If
 
End Sub

Installation

1. Open Outlook and Alt-F11 to open Visual Basic Editor
2. Copy this code to ThisOutlookSession

Send the ‘URL’ of the requested page in the subject and mail to ‘browse@webmail.com’. This service sends the requested webpage offline through email,not just that, it can even send us the google search results page for the search queried for. It also sends you the results of the google image searches as well. Just change the subject of the mail from ‘url’ to ‘google:query’, ‘googleimg:query’ & ‘rediff:query’ and send it to ‘browse@webinmail.com’

This is a simpler version of the previous mentioned service. Send a mail to ‘www@web2mail.com’ with subject as requested url.

Cheat Sheet

Subject- <URL>
To- www@web2mail.com

Subject- <URL>
To- browse@webinmail.com

Subject- google:query
To- browse@webinmail.com

Subject- googleimg:query
To- browse@webinmail.com

Subject- rediff:query
To- browse@webinmail.com